


with the help of your good hands

by lochTenderness (theseourbodies)



Series: Adventure! [2]
Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Alternate Universe - Dungeons & Dragons, DnD style adventurers au!!, Druid Ushijima Wakatoshi, Gen, In Medias Res, M/M, Monk Bokuto Koutarou, guardian spirits, reunions!!, transformation scenes!!
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-12
Updated: 2020-08-12
Packaged: 2021-03-06 00:07:31
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,545
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25864087
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/theseourbodies/pseuds/lochTenderness
Summary: Bokuto, Kuroo, and the Miyagi captains are long-time members of the same adventuring party. They're all in this spooky sunken library for a reason, but Bokuto's reasons are more complicated than anyone realizes.
Relationships: Akaashi Keiji/Bokuto Koutarou, Bokuto Koutarou & Kuroo Tetsurou, Bokuto Koutarou & Ushijima Wakatoshi
Series: Adventure! [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1909402
Comments: 4
Kudos: 31





	with the help of your good hands

**Author's Note:**

> I missed bokuaka week, but i was so inspired by everyone's TERRIFIC ART on the tweeter that I just had to write out all my feelings
> 
> This fic is a mash up of inspo from several sources, most notably ATLA's Wan Shi Tong and the spirit library, because I Know What I Like tbh. ALSO he's not tagged but Warlock Oikawa is Definitely Present.

Oikawa has a gleam in his eye, something overbright, feverish; but Koutarou decides that that’s a problem for Sawamura just then and walks away from the party with only a quick look shared with Tetsu. Kuroo will both understand best and will also not try to stop him, a valuable combination that Koutarou cherishes in his friend.   
  
Koutarou doesn’t realize he’s been followed until someone says: “This is not safe. Come back to the group.”   
  
Koutarou likes Ushijima; as new as he is to the party, Koutarou’s known him for a long while. He’s sturdy, honest; Oikawa hates him for some reason he hasn’t bothered to explain, but Koutarou thinks that that’s just a warlock thing. Koutarou’s certainly known some pretty wishy-washy druids, but Wakatoshi’s as solid as a rock, even if he is over-fond of lizards.   
  
Right this moment, Koutarou wishes that he liked him much less; maybe he wouldn’t feel as guilty for brushing him off.   
  
“Yeah, but I gotta—you know?”   
  
Wakatoshi cocks his head—his salamander familiar, who would be too big to ride on anyone’s shoulders but Wakstoshi’s, slits one eye open and cocks his head, too. “It is not wise,” he says, unflappable. The salamander stretches its arms and wraps himself tighter around Wakatoshi’s throat; it’s cold in this fantastical library, and Wakatoshi usually runs hotter than anyone Koutarou knows. Koutarou can relate.   
  
“I know it’s not, but I gotta go and see him again.”   
  
“Why?”   
  
“Because I think I have something that belongs to him.”   
  
Wakatoshi raises his eyebrows. “You believe that you have something that once belonged to the guardian spirit of this place?”   
  
“Well…. Yeah.”   
  
“Bokuto, I do not think that that is possible. If you are leaving the group for this selfish reason, I cannot allow it.”  
  
When Oikawa gets really mad at Wakatoshi, Sawamura’s favorite argument is that Wakatoshi isn’t mean on purpose, that he doesn’t recognize the difference between stating facts and being cruel, sometimes, but Koutarou has known Wakatoshi for a long while. The dig at Koutarou is clear in his voice, and it’s deliberate; Koutarou thinks he understands what it is that Wakatoshi is trying to do, but it’s like a slap despite the intent. The salamander has opened both eyes and is staring at Koutarou as arrogantly as its master.   
  
Koutarou takes one deep breath in and out, and then another. If this were Oikawa, they could duke it out and they could work through it or get Kuroo or Sawamura to mediate. Instead, it’s just Koutarou out here; he has to handle this on his own.   
  
“I believe that it is not your place to comment on the relative safety of this library,” churrs a deep voice, above them or behind them, or all around, really. Or perhaps from right in front of them-- the Librarian slips out between the massive shadowy towers of the bookshelves, hulking over to put their pale round face and sharp beak at a level the humans before them. Koutarou’s breath seizes, but that is nothing new. Even hunched so that their liquid dark eyes can watch them up close, the Librarian is a massive shape, long body tapering off into the shadows—the absolute limit of such a body feels unknowable. In the cool blank silence, far away from the noise of their other party members, the sound of the Librarian’s feathers rustling is strange and unfamiliar. They are like no owl Koutarou has ever known before, and not only because of their great size.   
  
“Druid,” says the Librarian, low voice cold.   
  
Wakatoshi bows low. “Librarian.”   
  
“Do you understand how you have insulted me?”   
  
Wakatoshi hesitates. The salamander—which has become a massive skink in the time Koutarou was distracted— watches the Librarian unblinkingly, his bright blue tail wrapped tight enough around Wakatoshi’s arm to leave indents in the flesh.   
  
“You do not,” says the Librarian; they do not ask a question. Koutarou carefully draws himself up to his full height. He may not have liked how Wakatoshi went about it, but he appreciates that his friend was trying to get Koutarou to arrive at the solution that Wakatoshi had decided was logical: to stay with the party and maintain safety in that way. Koutarou will do everything he can to make the Librarian understand that; if that is not enough, he will stand with Wakatoshi in a fight without question.   
  
The Librarian’s huge pale face swivels slightly so that one large dark eye can catch Koutarou. The movement is precise, predatory, but the Librarian does not say anything to Koutarou.   
  
“I have assured you that you will be safe here,” the Librarian says to both of them. “I have promised that no harm will come to you, not by external forces or by the knowledge on these shelves. As long as you are here, my will is the way. You would challenge this?”   
  
With a flicker of motion, the abnormally large skink still wrapped around Wakatoshi’s neck and shoulders shrinks rapidly with a tiny _pop_ of displaced air. Properly skink-sized, it scrambles up Wakatoshi’s neck to curl around his ear like an ornament, the bright red flash on his head peeking through the brown of Wakatoshi’s hair over dark eyes.   
  
Whatever that means in lizard, it apparently soothes Wakatoshi. His brow smooths: he bows again, lowly. “I did not understand,” he rumbles, to Koutarou’s genuine shock. “It was not my intention.”   
  
“Intention is powerful, but not as powerful as the perceived word, Druid Ushijima,” the Librarian says, clicking their beak. “Please take this lesson with you in your travels, and trust in my word while you are here.”   
  
“I will,” Wakatoshi responds; in the stillness of the topless shelves around them, his voice seems to have a physical weight, words falling to the ground before him with perceptible sound.   
  
“Good. Now return to your fellows. I will return your monk to you unharmed.”  
  
On a different day, facing a different being, Wakatoshi might have said that Koutarou didn’t belong to anyone, and that implying otherwise was wrong; but he isn’t immune to the weird tension that has overtaken the whole party since Oikawa and Testu dragged them underground, chasing a rumor of a great lost library just scraping the Underdark. He nods and walks away, back straight; Koutarou thinks that even he would not have been able to turn his back on the Librarian, and he admires Wakatoshi even more as he and his familiar fade into the deep shadows.   
  
There are eerie ghost lights hovering some height above Koutarou’s head at the end of every book shelf. Early on, Koutarou had suspected that they were not meant to illuminate as much as they were meant to hide. In the bluish light, the Librarian’s white face glows and their body bleeds into the dark. They rise from their hunch and settle back, looking down at Koutarou as their talons scuff against the floor.   
  
“You have something that belongs to me, Monk Bokuto? Something that you need to return?”   
  
It is Koutarou’s turn to hesitate. He knows—he’s almost certain. But he is not absolutely certain. Familiar doubt knocks loudly at his defenses inside, sinks cold daggers into his mind and down his spine. If he’s wrong, there’s a very real chance that the Librarian, so angry earlier at just a perceived slight, might well kill him for the insult. His party, trapped underground with an angry spirit in complete control of their surroundings, would have to fight for their lives against them. Koutarou finds he is upset at the prospect—not just of his friends having to fight for survival, but that they will be fighting the spirit before him.   
  
The spirit whose patience is apparently not unlimited. “Monk Bokuto,” says the Librarian, and Koutarou tries to tell himself that he’s definitely imagining any exasperation that he hears. “What is it that you have?”   
  
Gods above, where the hell to even start. “When I was a lot younger, I lived much farther West than I do now. I had been given up to a temple when I was very young, and I spent most of my life with the monks.”   
  
The Librarian settles, drawing his shoulders high up so that their wings dragged with strange soft sounds against the feathers of their body. They don’t interrupt.   
  
“The temple is the only thing I ever knew, and I loved it there. But it was difficult; I don’t think the monks really liked having me there, so it wasn’t as good as it could have been. I left when I was sixteen. But right before I left them, I met the strangest man—I met a scholar who had come to the temple.”  
“This was unusual?” asks the Librarian.   
  
“Well, not really, but he sure was. Anyway, he was looking for something that I didn’t really understand, but I liked him. I liked him a lot, and when I decided to leave, I asked him to come with me. We travelled together for a long time, a really long time. And then, one day in a forest really close to here, I lost him.”   
  
A very faint tremor causes the nearest lights to bobble; the swinging makes the Librarian’s hunched up form flicker strangely. Behind him, Koutarou can just hear someone yelling—Tetsu, or Sawamura.  
  
“I didn’t mean to. I didn’t even know what was happening until it was over,” Koutarou confesses into the heavy dark. It’s been just long enough underground that Koutarou is starting to miss the sun in a more complicated way. He wishes he could see it now, right now, so that he could see himself and the Librarian at once, fully illuminated. “Remember, I told you: he was looking for something I didn’t understand. And so when he stepped off the path, I didn’t realize.”   
  
“Leaving the path is a very common way to become lost, monk. What is the significance?”   
  
“Well he definitely did that, but he left the path, his Path, you know?”   
  
Another subtle rumble in somewhere deeper than his feet—longer, this time, and a little harder. Something falls to the ground nearby with a meaty slap—a book, one of the books. Koutarou feels a familiar warmth between his shoulder blades as Sawamura activates the locator spell sewn into all of their clothes.   
  
“So, I lost him in the forest. And I’ve been looking for him ever since, really.” Koutarou has to take a deep breath, trying to settle himself. The trembling in the earth has not really stopped—it is a steady shake now, with only peaks and valleys and no pauses. Above him, the Librarian has risen to their full and terrible height, mantling their great wings over Koutarou as they arch their moon face down to beam down at him. Like this they are backlight by the swaying ghost light; their pale face is dimmed, but their dark bright eyes glint like hard stones.   
  
Tetsu is his oldest friend, and he knows more of this story than anyone else. But even he does not have this much: “And I look for him because he didn’t just go missing. He went missing when I wasn’t paying attention, because I was angry at him, like I used to get angry at a lot of things. He was so caught up in reaching for something that I couldn’t see, in books and in scrolls and in other people’s stories, but I—I wanted him to just be caught up in me.” Koutarou doesn’t look away from the Librarian. His voice is hushed among the rumbling, the now-constant sound of books falling and the rising, frantic voices behind him. “I loved him very much. I mean, that’s probably obvious. But I didn’t tell him that. I told him that I’d never forgive him, never ever, but I would! Of course I would because there’s nothing to forgive!”   
  
Koutarou has to shout to be heard over the steadily rising rumble.  
  
“Stop,” hisses the Librarian, “enough!” Their low voice warbles and shifts, like many voices speaking at once from one mouth which is also attempting to shriek.  
  
“I forgive you for whatever you need to be forgiven for,” shouts Koutarou in response, and then he does the most wild thing he has ever done in his wild life and presses both of his scarred, rough hands against the Librarian’s heaving breast feathers. The contact stings him like a static shock, and Koutarou sinks his fingers into the strange liquid feel of them instinctively. Behind him he hears Tetsu screaming for him before Sawamura skids into view with Tetsu hot on his heels.   
  
“Kou what the hell have you done!” Tetsu shouts. “Get away from him and let’s get the hell out of here!”   
But Koutarou can’t do that right now, he can’t do that, he has two fistfuls of slick-silk feathers and if he looks away from the Librarian right now, the Librarian will drive their long terrible beak into Koutarou’s body and they’ll never know, they’ll never remember—   
  
Without hesitation, Koutarou throws his head back and bellows:  
  
“I forgive you for whatever you need to be forgiven for, Akaa-shi-i-i-i!”   
  
All around them wood shelves scream until they all shatter simultaneously to the tune of the cacophonous roar of stone pillars collapsing; behind him, Koutarou can hear Tetsu start to chant frantically; he feels a familiar warm tug, just behind his navel. But this is a background rage of white noise; Koutarou has other things to focus on: cotton knotted and trapped in each of his two strong fists, the warmth of human skin beneath and he lowers his eyes from where the Librarian’s eyes had been slowly until he meets the same bright eyes, huge in a round pale face, staring at Koutarou over the slice of his sharp, straight nose and the crumpled line of his mouth. The library crumbles and shatters and cracks and screams apart around them, but Koutarou hauls Akaashi Keiji against him again, for the first time in six years and ignores all of it but the thin, hiccupping cry he can hear Akaashi making.   
  
Tetsu’s voice, rising into a booming, artificial echo of himself, soon wipes out even that; when he chanting reaches a crescendo, he’s blotted out by an ear-popping blast of air and a wicked, brief sense of falling, and then Koutarou can feel heat all around him as the sun blazes down on the field where they’ve been transported. Koutarou has time to choke on a laugh before Akaashi uses his new, clumsy, human strength to bull right into him. With an “oof!” Koutarou trips right backward and into the grass; a familiar, heavy weight presses him down and Koutarou doesn’t care about the yelling he can still hear, the subtle trembling in the ground beneath him. He presses his mouth to a forehead, the shell of an ear, the leaking corner of a bright dark eye; the flat tip of a nose, the crumpled line of a pair of lips. He rediscovers old country by inches until Akaashi grips him tight by the ears and steers him right to Akaashi’s half-laughing mouth. They kiss in the sunlight, Koutarou and Keiji, and Koutarou’s never been so happy. 

**Author's Note:**

> Title taken from [Prospero's Speech,](https://open.spotify.com/track/6F7fzpsdV6ELuMNWY9ytsv?si=m3uVBuolSRaLAz2zc66_3A) an adaptation of [this epilogue](https://www.sparknotes.com/nofear/shakespeare/tempest/page_202/) to music by Loreena McKennitt


End file.
